


This Must Be The Place

by ipskip (last7)



Category: Edge of Tomorrow (2014), Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Action & Romance, Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe - Edge of Tomorrow Fusion, Explicit Language, F/M, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Time Loop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-20
Updated: 2017-05-20
Packaged: 2018-11-02 21:19:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10952928
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/last7/pseuds/ipskip
Summary: What's worse than having a groundhog day? One with invading aliens.Raleigh Becket is stuck in a time loop but far from being at a disadvantage he wields a weapon to potentially end the war. Mako Pentecost, with her own unfinished business, teaches the inexperienced Becket in the way of the Drift. Together, they help each other avenge their families.-“The ship is about to explode, you’ve gotta get outta here -” He aimed over his shoulder without looking and killed another Mimic behind her. “The beach is a mistake. They knew we were coming, it’s a wipeout -”“What the hell are you talking about?”“I just know!” He tried to get them both out of the ship’s blast radius but she had planted her feet. “Look, there’s gonna be a swarm of them coming for us any second and I’d rather not be blown the fuck up -”“Come find me when you wake up,” she interrupted, dropping her sword.“Huh?”“Find me when you wake up!”





	This Must Be The Place

**Author's Note:**

> I have very liberally taken most of the story and a little dialogue from the Edge of Tomorrow film directed by Doug Liman. So if you have seen it (and I highly recommend you do!) you will definitely recognise it. I thought the main male and female characters and their relationship would translate very well into versions of Raleigh and Mako. I tweaked details and certain plot points from the film into ones better suited to the particulars and themes of Pacific Rim. I also added a heap of character stuff so if action/adventure isn't really your thing, have no fear.

Winded, vision blurred, he struggled to stand but fell back, useless, into the sand bank. 

The sound of something huge crash landing nearby disrupted the white noise of battle.

Moments later, silhouetted against the fire and dust and smoke, a figure in an exo-suit staggered out of the wreckage, their movements dazed. They were holding a curved blade, the tip of it dragging a good four feet behind. 

He blinked away some of the fogginess. He had seen her before. From where, he couldn’t place but if he didn’t warn her that a Mimic was hurtling towards her from behind -

“Fuck!”

Too late.

It struck her in the back and she landed next to him with a sickening thud and a spray of sand. A trickle of blood made its way through her blue-tipped hair.

“Shit!”

She was probably dead but there was no time to make sure because one of them filled his now all too clear vision and he pulled the trigger several times in panic into its ugly alien face.

 

-

 

“Hey!” 

He waved the arms of his suit to get her attention.

“HEY! Behind you!”

She looked his way, the sword in her hand glinting in the firelight, and he briefly thought maybe he could save her this time.

The Mimic struck her in the back. 

At his position on top of the ridge, his eyes followed the arc her body traced as it flew across the ditch and landed with that sickening thud and that spray of sand. He didn’t need to be any closer to know that her blood would be trickling out onto the sand through her blue hair.

Movement on the ground beside him revealed alien tentacles.

“God, fucki-!”

 

-

 

He landed on the beach wondering if he should try this time or just get on with not dying.

But he found himself making his way to the place where her carrier would crash, anticipating Mimics easily, and waiting.

Seeing her face to face rather than across a crater filled with smoke and flying sand, or on the side of a moving bus with the words ‘FULL METAL BITCH’ emblazoned across her chest was… thrilling.

He was elated and she was bewildered.

“The ship is about to explode, you’ve gotta get outta here -” He aimed over his shoulder without looking and killed another Mimic behind her. “The beach is a mistake. They knew we were coming, it’s a wipeout -”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“I just know!” He tried to get them both out of the ship’s blast radius but she had planted her feet. “Look, there’s gonna be a swarm of them coming for us any second and I’d rather not be blown the fuck up -”

“Come find me when you wake up,” she interrupted, dropping her sword.

“Huh?” 

“Find me when you wake up!”

He felt blistering heat and saw flames lick her face.

 

-

 

She was alone in the vast Mimic training hangar with a staff spinning in her hands, moving gracefully with bursts of violence and then moments of stillness. 

Without the hulking exo-suit she looked remarkably small. “But still lethal,” he thought, watching the staff cut through the air.

Not without some trepidation, he stepped out of the safe zone.

“Yes?” she said curtly. She eyed his private uniform. “What do you want?”

Her expression was extremely forbidding and he didn't know how to start this conversation. This whole thing was absurd.

She was getting impatient and he was still staring at her, trying to figure out what to say.

“Have I got something on my face, soldier?” she asked testily.

He opened his mouth to deny this and was hit in the head by a stray Mocker. He had stupidly forgotten he was in the middle of a Mimic training hangar.

 

-

 

“Yes? What do you want?”

“Uh, we met on the beach yesterday - I mean, we will meet tomorrow -”

“Who said you could talk to me?” She narrowed her eyes suspiciously. 

“You. You said to come find you when I wake up.” Even as he spoke, keeping a lookout for the machines darting jerkily around the place, his words sounded ridiculous.

But they seemed to mean something to her.

“You've got it?” she said, lowering her voice. Excited but measured. “How many times have you reset?”

“Around ten?” 

“Good. You're a fast learner. It’ll make this easier,” she said, walking briskly back across to the safe zone with the staff over her shoulder. “Have we had this conversation before?”

“Uh, no,” he said, hurrying to keep up whilst trying not to be made a fatal victim of a Mocker again. “Hey, I'd just like to know what the hell is going on.”

“Have you seen anything strange?” she said, speaking as if she hadn’t heard him.

He looked at her incredulously. Was she fucking kidding?

She rolled her eyes. “Any visions? Like in your head?”

“I don’t think so.”

“You’re a private so I’m assuming you don’t have much experience with the Mimics.” She stopped in front of a large array of suits and weapons. “You need training if we’re going to get far.”

“Where, exactly, are we going?”

“Suit up,” she said, already marching back the way they came. “Meet me in the hangar in ten.”

The lack of answers was frustrating, to say the least, and the only way of getting them was to follow her orders. 

“What’s your name, soldier?” she asked. She was comfortable in trousers and a tank top while he was labouring under the weight of a hundred pounds of armour.

“Raleigh Becket,” he grunted.

“Right, Becket,” she said, shoving a magazine into a pistol. “You’ll address me as -”

“You’re Mako Pentecost, Angel of Tokyo,” he blurted. She was on the sides of buses because she had been an integral part in saving Tokyo. Until it was lost in the second attack. She was one of the reasons why he enlisted.

“Also known as the Full Metal Bitch.” She snapped back the slide menacingly, giving him a stony look. “However, ‘Pentecost’ is sufficient.”

He lasted five minutes in the hangar before he broke a leg and she shot him in the head.

 

-

 

“What you have is called the Drift. It was transferred to you when a rare Alpha Mimic you killed dripped its blood on you and now you’re connected to the aliens’ hive mind. Whenever you’re killed you relive the day as if you’re one of the Alphas.”

“Wait, wait, wait. Can we maybe do the training and the exposition separately?” He paused briefly to catch his breath.

“Becket!”

He lay on his back with no feeling in any of his limbs. He couldn’t even move his neck. Footsteps approached and he heard her cock her gun.

“Now you know you can never let your guard down,” she said, coming into view as he stared upwards.

He groaned.

“Was this just an elaborate way to teach me a lesson?”

“Maybe. I think you learned it,” she said, slightly amused. “Time to reset.”

She aimed and fired.

 

-

 

The Mockers were no match for her. The hangar rang with metallic clangs and clashes as she dodged, pivoted, and slashed with astonishing speed and strength. Watching her fight never got old. She wielded the oversized katana against the machines like it was personal and he nearly felt sorry for the real aliens that died and would die by her hand.

“Your turn,” she said, and flicked back a blue-tipped lock of hair.

He had lost count of how many times he had come back to her. He was dying at longer intervals now but she was still much more skilful than him. 

She never told him how many times she had reset, didn’t volunteer the information and refused to answer when he asked, so he learned to keep his mouth shut on that front. Most of the time.

“Angel of Tokyo. It’s because you had the Drift, right?” he asked, stalling, pretending to adjust his suit.

“Yeah,” she said slowly.

“Must’ve taken a lot of reset experience to get this good.”

“If this is a competitive thing, I’m not giving you any stats. You’re a fast learner but not that fast,” she said flatly.

It wasn’t a competitive thing, he was just trying to get her to talk about something other than training and the practicalities of the Drift.

“It doesn’t matter how many times you die just make sure you do and quickly. You don’t want to wake up with somebody else’s blood in you.”

“Is that how you lost it?”

She took a moment, as if contemplating whether to tell him, then she nodded.

“It was in Tokyo. I saved the city. There was nothing for five days and then they came back. I went out there aiming to do the same thing and then I got injured,” she said, her eyes fixed on a stationary Mocker. “I was bleeding out but not quickly enough and I guess I passed out because I woke up in London without the Drift. Tokyo was destroyed.”

Her voice never betrayed her yet her slightly creased brow hinted at more emotion than she showed. It was more than she ever shared before.

“I’m sorry,” he said quietly, and then he was suddenly caught in the piercing gaze of her eyes. It only lasted a second. She blinked and looked away. He blinked too, like a proverbial deer in headlights.

“Enough talk,” she said, businesslike again, and turned the Mockers on. “Get out there, Becket. I don’t want to have to shoot you in less than twenty minutes.”

She shot him in thirty.

 

-

 

He had no idea what happened after her rigorous training session since it always ended with him getting a bullet in the head.

“I’m hungry as fuck because of you,” she muttered, as she led the way to the mess hall. It was midday and she hadn’t eaten anything since the night before, having woken up at dawn to take advantage of the empty hangar.

“It’s actually your fault if you think about it,” he ventured, watching for her reaction. None so far. “Your future self told me to find you.”

She didn’t deign to respond, only increased her pace away from him.

Several people he didn’t recognise were ahead of him but he spotted her small, erect stature down the line. Even tired and hungry, she stood alert to her surroundings.

Looking at the food, he realised he wasn’t as hungry as he should be. Today had restarted so many times he had lost track. However, his life felt like it was moving forward in a linear fashion… The logistics of it all sent his mind into a spiral.

Somebody nudged him in the back. “Hey, buddy, I get you’re contemplating the meaning of life before the drop tomorrow but you mind not doing it in the chow line?”

He dropped onto the seat opposite her. 

“Eat. Don’t just stare at it.” She was shovelling food into her mouth at a frightening speed.

“I feel sick,” he mumbled.

“It’ll pass.”

They were sitting alone but he noticed that most of the people who passed their table either gave her a respectful nod or a quiet “Ma’am” and she acknowledged them with a small nod of her own.

“Um, do you want me to call you ‘ma’am’?” he asked, slightly abashed that he wasn’t already.

“No,” she said quickly. “I would prefer it if they didn’t.”

“Why?”

“I don’t like the attention and it was the Drift anyway.”

“But you did something with it. You saved Tokyo,” he said, careful not to sound too admiring.

“Only the first time,” she said warily. 

She hadn’t told him how she lost the Drift this reset and even though he already knew the story he asked all the same.

“What happened the second time?”

“I lost it. They gave me a blood transfusion,” she said plainly, emptying her plate. “Which you should avoid. My best advice is to die quickly.”

He sensed that she wasn’t going to share anything more personal at this point.

“If it’s in the blood, did you try and give it to someone else? You know, two heads are better than one type of thing?”

“It’s impossible, I’ve tried everything,” she said, wiping her mouth neatly and swinging her legs over the bench. “Only they can give it to you and they can take it back. They’re already looking for you.”

“What do you mean?” he said, alarmed.

She led him across the tarmac and opened a nondescript door.

“You’re connected to their hive mind but you’ve only been able to reset the day so far. You are sure you haven’t seen anything?”

“I’m sure.”

“Good, because when the visions start it means they’ll lock on to you soon after,” she explained, rummaging in dusty boxes and pulling out large pieces of paper. They were sketches and blueprints of something that resembled a blooming water lily, but what made it unmistakably alien were its petals of sharp metal and octopus-like tentacles. 

He gulped. Dread pin pricked the back of his neck.

“What is it?”

“A sentient fusion of robotic and biological technology, probably what the Mimics are modelled after. I call it the Precursor. It’s the thing that turns back time,” she said, spreading out the drawings on a table and pointing to one of them. “This is what you’ll be seeing.”

He didn’t want to confront it, neither in visions nor in real life.

“Did you do these?” he said, trying to disperse his disquiet. “They’re really detailed.”

“Yes, I was an engineer before the invasion,” she said impatiently and cleared the table, bringing up a 3D projection of the Precursor. “In addition to this, you’ll see flashes of where it’s hidden but the Drift also works in reverse. They’ll try to make you mentally weaker, fuck with you psychologically.”

“How?”

“It’s a two way street. You can see what they’re up to but they can also tap into your memories.” Through the projection, she met his gaze, almost apologetic. “Your most painful and traumatic. To cripple you.”

He looked away from her and into the centre of the blooming Precursor, a black void that her blueprints failed to depict. His most painful and traumatic memories? Yeah, that would definitely fuck him up.

“I’m here to help you,” she said sternly, assuring him. She came round to his side of the table and crossed her arms determinedly. “I trained you to kill Mimics and I’ll help you through this too. You can do this.”

She mistook his silence for fear and he  _ was _ scared, shitless in fact, but this was what he joined the army for. It may not be exactly what he anticipated but he would be damned if he didn’t give it his all. He owed Yancy that much.

“How do you know all this? Did you have someone to help you?”

“Yes. They’re dead now,” she said in her usual clipped tone but she hid her face behind the curtain of her hair.

“I’m sorry,” he said. To her, she only met him seven hours ago. To him, it felt like days, constantly in her company, learning to read her carefully curated exterior. She felt so much underneath it.

“It’s just war.” She turned away, packing away her papers.

“You know, you’re kinda an inspiration to me,” he said lightly. It sounded trite and like he was ten years old but he meant it.

“What?” she snorted.

“Yeah! Seeing you on posters and t.v.,” he went on, grinning at her skeptical expression. “You were everywhere. You looked so… cool.”

“You’re taking the piss,” she said, with a hint of a smile.

“No,” he said earnestly. “My brother, he was killed by them, I watched it happen. I don’t know how I got away but I did.” He grinned again, ruefully. “And, would you believe it, I saw you on a poster in an evacuation shelter.”

He chanced a glance at her. She was frowning.

“I heard you lost your father to them and I just saw my brother die. You were fighting for something. I wanted to do the same.”

She was still frowning, looking at the ground uncomfortably.

“What was his name?”

“Yancy.”

She nodded.

“I’m sorry,” she said, lifting her head to meet his eyes. Hers were shiny with the memory of her own loss and he wondered if she would cry, let a tear fall, but he knew better. “Come on, we can fit in a few more hours of training before dinner.”

“I follow where you lead, Pentecost,” he said, only half-joking.

“I’m glad my story motivated you to enlist but a reporter got it out of me under false pretenses. I despise them,” she said, snarling those last three words.

“You mean you got  _ tricked _ into baring your soul?” he laughed. “The Angel of Tokyo is fallible after all.”

“Now you are taking the piss.”

Back at the hangar, she made him pay for his smart mouth with the most gruelling session she devised yet. He ended up on the ground, uninjured but winded, more times than he could count.

“Again,” she called from the safe zone.

He dodged and weaved, punched and fired, flew and landed on his ass.

“Again.”

Dodged, fired, jumped, mountains, snow dam black void Yancy -

“Again.”

Breathless, with an excruciating pain in his back, he tried to remember each glimpse of the vision.

“Wait!” he yelled, hearing the sound of her gun leaving the holster. “I know where it is!”

“The Precursor?” She dropped to her knees beside him.

“A dam. In Italy, I think. Really tall but narrow... Fuck!” he said, in between gasps of pain. The image of his brother would not leave him. “Mako, I saw Yancy.”

She froze at the sound of her name.

“There’s a way to lessen the severity of the memories,” she said, recovering quickly and pulling out her pistol. “Find me when you wake up.”

 

-

 

It was funny how much he defined himself in comparison to Yancy when they were growing up together. His brother was the quiet, confident one, sure of himself, never the whiner, while he was the young upstart, always getting into trouble that Yancy would yank him out of, giving him a stern lecture that would shame him for a little bit, make him remorseful, then he would forget all about it when the next chance for mischief presented itself.

“It was an endless cycle,” he reminisced. “I wanted to be like him but I realised I never could. He was too good.”

This early in the morning, the hangar’s silence threatened to drown out the quiet of his voice, making him shy to speak as he sat opposite her. 

“I -” she cleared her throat, obviously uncomfortable sharing her personal feelings. “I know what you mean. I struggled to live up to my father’s expectations. I still do.”

He perked up with surprise at that small revelation. Every nugget of her life that she decided to share with him was a minor miracle.

Starting the day again every time he died was really fucking annoying when he was trying to build a relationship with Mako Pentecost, a woman he respected and admired even before this all happened. He always had to keep in mind that, to her, she only met him anywhere from zero to twelve hours ago, virtually a stranger, come to ruin her day.

The moment his eyes snapped open, he headed straight here to tell her what had happened, nearly bursting into laughter at the indignant expression on her face when he started talking to her with inappropriate familiarity. Sobriety returned when he recounted their last training session.

“I think that’s enough for now,” she said crisply, rising nimbly from her cross-legged position on the ground. “We should try to find that dam.”

“Oh - yeah,” he said at once, though he couldn’t help but feel a little disappointed. “Good idea.”

It was for the best. Even though it was she who suggested they start with how to deal with the traumatic memories, it was apparent she regretted it almost immediately. 

The method to not get overwhelmed by them was, simply, to talk about it. The circumstances, the emotions surrounding it, how you feel about it now. It was, more or less, a therapy session and he was grateful for the opportunity. Ever since that day, he had been alone and it was a luxury to have someone to talk to.

She was not a great therapist though.

“Sorry to cut it short like that,” she said after a while. They were walking side by side across the tarmac. “I didn’t mean to interrupt you with my own shit. I guess it just stirred up some of my old hang-ups. Keep going if you want.”

“I don’t have to if you’re not comfortable with -”

“I can handle myself,” she said brusquely. She closed her eyes briefly and sighed. “We’re going to war tomorrow. You should prepare yourself as much as you can.”

They reached the room where she had shown him the Precursor and she set to work finding the dam. A couple of hours passed with just his voice filling the room.

“He used to have the worst farts,” he laughed. “They were seriously noxious, you could classify them as chemical warfare. He’d let rip and, even if you were in another room, you would smell it seconds later, it travelled that fast. I always wondered how he even maintained girlfriends.”

Sprawled across two chairs and hands linked behind his head, he was comfortable and the memory that swamped him in the last reset felt far away.

“You haven’t talked about the day he died yet,” she said, peering over the top of her screen. 

“Yeah,” he sighed. “I suppose I should since it’s what they’re trying to kill me with.” The ease suddenly gone and replaced with tremors that affected him so badly he had to sit up, crossing his arms to try and suppress them.

“It won’t ever go away completely but it’s the best method to cope with it,” she said softly, only her eyes visible. They were tired, bloodshot even, but, nevertheless, they compelled him to go on.

He scrubbed his face hard with both hands then finally settled, sitting still.

“I was visiting Yancy in Anchorage,” he said. “It was a really sunny day. Warm, too, for that time of year - late Fall. I remember that because I noticed the trees still had their leaves as I was walking down to the bar where we planned to meet. Yancy never left the town where we grew up. I did though, it was too small for me.

“I got there first. I used to work there, it was one of my first jobs, actually. It was one of those old-fashioned places where they only served whiskey and beer, and all you had for company was the radio or the local folks who came in for a drink and a chat everyday. I was waiting at a seat by the window when I heard shouting and screaming, like it was coming from far away, and a few of us stuck our heads out for a sticky beak. But when we got outside the streets were unusually quiet and there was smoke hanging in the direction of the airport. It was so strange, I had never seen or heard the city like that before. We just stood there looking at the sky like a herd of sheep with our mouths hanging open, waiting for it to do something weird, like fall down on us.

“Then I heard my name. Someone was shouting it and shouting it. It was Yancy, running towards us from the end of the street and he looked terrified. I had never seen him so scared. I started towards him but he shouted for us to get inside. A few of them did but I couldn’t, I panicked, I didn’t know what to do. He ran past a woman, she was running too but then she tripped and, typical Yance, he went back and helped her up.” He took a deep breath, as if bracing himself for what came next. “I saw it then. They were still only halfway to the bar and, judging from the speed that it was travelling at, they couldn’t possibly get to us in time. Yancy yelled at me to run again and then it was on them, just like that, its arms crushing them then throwing them away like they were ragdolls, it was so easy. Then it turned its head towards me and I ran for it, I slammed the door shut, jumped the bar, and opened the cellar door in the floor and just shoved people in. We were so scared we waited in the dark for hours. All that time I was thinking of Yancy, hoping he was still alive but when I saw his body I don’t know why I even thought that. I saw the attack with my own eyes. No one could have survived that, my brother definitely didn’t.”

Looking up at the ceiling, he exhaled loudly at it and realised he wasn’t shaking anymore.

“We found out later it was a complete surprise attack coming from the Pacific. We had no warning at all. Anchorage was decimated. I got out of there, I went inland, and I stayed at an evacuation shelter for two weeks. I wasn’t doing anything, just eating and sleeping, and it was bad for me, I had too much time, replaying his death over and over again in my head. We didn’t see each other much when I moved away but we were still close. It was just me and him.” He wiped away tears that he didn’t remember falling. “I felt too  _ light _ , like I was floating, like I was dead myself. That went on for most of the time I was there, feeling nothing, then feeling too much. Then I saw you -”

Her eyes flickered and she frowned but then her expression cleared when he continued.

“- on a poster on the other side of the hall. I didn’t see it before because I didn’t bother getting out of bed most days. You were in your exo-suit glory, with those blue slashes of paint on it, they were even in your hair. Full-metal bitch. I remember saying those words aloud because it was like something had sparked in me when I saw you. Why didn’t I think of it before? You lost your father to those motherfuckers and I lost my brother. You joined the army to avenge him and what was I doing? Sitting on my ass feeling sorry for myself. I enlisted that very day. The first time I saw battle was the attack on the beach tomorrow when I got the Drift. I wouldn’t say it’s been a breeze but I wouldn’t have it any other way. It’s been a blessing.”

The room was quiet. He had nothing else to say. Finally tearing his eyes away from the ceiling, he once again found himself held hostage in the beam of her gaze. All that he said here in this room, she would not even know it happened if he died and found her again. It was painful to lose the scraps he gathered in the few hours of his resets, every inch he gained with her, he was back at square one when he woke up.

“My father had a motto. It was ‘I am ready’,” she said eventually, breaking the silence. “Are you ready, Raleigh Becket?”

It wasn’t a rhetorical question. He was tired of hearing himself talk but the knot in his stomach that had been there since his brother died was a little looser and the heaviness in his chest a little lighter; his muscles burned from training non-stop but he knew he could face the Mimics with no problem now. Without her, it would have been a different story. All that remained was how he would deal with the visions when they attacked him again.

“I am,” he replied with confidence.

“Good,” she said, eyes glinting. “Because I found the dam.”

“Already?”

“Found it within an hour. Italy doesn’t have many dams.”

“Why didn’t you say anything?” he asked, surprised.

“It was important for you to finish,” she said, shrugging. “This is it, right?”

“Yeah!” The picture she showed him looked very similar to the one in the vision. He read the name of it. “Vajont Dam… A lot of people died when a landslide displaced the water in it and washed out into the valley below. My dad told me about it. He was an hydraulic engineer,” he said, smiling at her raised eyebrows. “He said it was one of the tallest in the world but also one of the most dangerous.”

“Your father’s right. As you said, around two thousand people died. It was abandoned shortly after the disaster because of its geologically unstable location,” she said, consulting her notes. “The dam was largely undamaged after that landslide so they must have thought it would be relatively safe to hide the Precursor. Thick walls, remote location, it’s perfect.”

“But how do we get there?”

“Obviously, flying would be the quickest but it’s also the least viable option,” she said, sounding irritated at the setback. “All we can do is somehow find a working car after the drop tomorrow.”

“Shit, that means we have to get off that beach,” he realised with dismay.

“Which means you have work to do.” She was already out of her seat. “I’m going to have lunch. I’ll bring you back something.”

With a sharp snap and a flick of her blue hair, she closed the door.

This was a problem. The farthest he had gone was when he confronted her outside the wreckage of her carrier. All he could do was remember how to get there. The future would have to wait.

*

The Norman coast was as chaotic as he remembered. The sky was grey, sand was flying, people were dying, but he reached her without a hitch. Unknown territory lay ahead of them.

As they slowly fought their way inland, there was something at the back of his mind that was trying to push its way forward but he concentrated on killing Mimics and it faded away with the noise of the battlefield.

Their combined skill only took them so far. As much as war was fought with strategy it also required luck and theirs abandoned them, as he knew it would eventually. They were forced to enter lower ground, leaving them exposed to enemies from above.

“We need to get the fuck out of here as fast we can,” she panted, running ahead of him.

“Agreed,” he replied.

The blue paintwork on her exo-suit was mostly hidden by mud and dirt but the blue in her hair was more vivid than ever. She never wore a helmet and when he asked why, she simply said, “Uncomfortable.” Later, she amended it with, “It also impairs vision and hearing. But mostly, it’s just uncomfortable.” He didn’t wear one either, after that.

They didn’t get out quickly enough.

“Look out, Mako!” he yelled.

A tentacled, shape-shifting thing leapt over the lip of the sand bank and onto her running form. She collapsed under its weight and went still.

“No!”

The alien turned to him and he saw its blue insides as it stretched its jaw menacingly; the same blue that coloured her armour and hair. It was an Alpha and it had come for him.

He glanced at her lifeless body one more time, placed the barrel of his handgun in his mouth and pulled the trigger.

 

-

 

“This way!” He ran left instead of the right that she was about take around an exploded tank. “Remember, one of us dies on that side.”

Unquestioning, she corrected her course and followed him.

It was more or less an equality of death between them, so many times did they die on the beach. The number of resets could have been fewer by half but every time she died first he was compelled to follow her; it didn’t even occur to him that he could continue alone.

“Duck!” he yelled, and in perfect synchronicity they both took a knee, avoiding the tentacle that snapped over their heads. With a clean swipe of her sword, she severed the appendage from its torso and he buried the Mimic into the sand with a slug of the machine gun mounted on the arm of his exo-suit.

“That felt good,” he said breathlessly. He caught her eye and, though she didn’t say a thing, her small, satisfied grin indicated she was feeling the same way.

He’d experienced several instances of seamless teamwork with her and each time it happened a spike of adrenaline coursed through him, making him say stupid and obvious statements like he just did. Killing Mimics by her side was a high that never became dull. 

They advanced a little further than his last reset, which didn’t always happen. Certain factors needed to come together and when they did, it was exciting and frightening at the same time. Regardless, he had to pay attention at every moment to remember what to avoid and what actions to repeat or change for the next iteration.

The dunes that marked the beginning of proper land were in sight but they still had to cross a warzone. Hiding behind a large piece of shrapnel, they peered over the top of it to see carnage. Exo-suits were strewn everywhere in various states of destruction; some mangled, some on fire, all contained dead bodies. The few that were still fighting looked to be on the verge of defeat and, one by one, the suits fell before their eyes. They sunk back below sight.

“Any visions?” she asked, checking her ammunition.

“I felt it trying to break through but it didn’t,” he said. She was Mako Pentecost but she wasn’t the same one who listened to him talk about Yancy. “All thanks to you.”

She looked puzzled.

And then she realised.

“You’re welcome...?”

He gave a bark of laughter then tried to stifle it by putting his head between his knees.

“You don’t know what’s next, do you?” she asked, smiling faintly. 

“No idea, we’re blind,” he said. His amusement vanished. “We just have to go for it.”

From behind the shrapnel, they gave each other a determined nod and moved forward into the open.

Quickly, but cautiously, they covered the last of the sand, every step adding to their fear of a Mimic attack which never came, and climbed over the dunes to see the maze of a caravan park spread out before them. Numerous cars were dotted across it. They could take their pick.

“Let’s split up,” she said, already heading towards the nearest one. When he exhausted his reset knowledge she naturally assumed the leadership role. She looked back him. “Be careful, Becket.”

The few he tried wouldn’t start. The dry cough of the engines trying to turn over sounded too loud in this desolate place. As much as he disliked being exposed in the open without any cover, he felt equally vulnerable in the twists and turns of this eerily abandoned holiday park. He came across many scenes of family meals set out with fold out tables and chairs, drink coolers, and barbecues; everything looked normal apart from an overturned chair here or there and the faint scent of food left to rot as the holiday goers fled in a hurry.

There were too many places from where a Mimic could give him an unpleasant surprise and just as he was starting to feel really unsettled he heard her whistle. Relief immediately washed over him. She must have found a working car.

He made his way to her with less caution than he should have. As he caught sight of her waving at him, her eyes widened in alarm and horror.

It sprang from under a trailer and blocked his path. He immediately engaged his weapons but the Mimic anticipated him and latched its tentacles onto his arms, squeezing like a boa constrictor until his armour caved inwards and crushed his bones. His scream of pain was cut short by an explosion that destroyed the both of them.

 

-

 

The French countryside slipped serenely past for the twelfth time. It was picturesque but he could only take so much of it and he was growing restless again.

In the passenger seat, he turned his attention from the window to the driver, who had two hands on the wheel and her attention firmly fixed on the road.

“What,” she intoned, after a full minute of his silent observation.

“You know you launched an RPG at me the first time we were at the caravan park?”

She merely raised an eyebrow.

“Up to then, it was only a bullet to the head but  _ that _ was a new low. Or should I say high?” he said, thinking about all the ways he had died so far. “No, sorry Pentecost, you don’t get that honour. It goes to the flamboyant Mimic that flipped me twenty feet into the air then impaled me on the end of its arm.”

“Flamboyant, indeed,” she said, not sounding impressed at all.

“You should’ve seen it.”

The faint recollection of being tossed like a plaything suddenly jolted into very different memories, ones that were sharp and vivid and clear as day. He was no longer sitting in a moving car, he was kneeling beside various broken, bleeding, lifeless iterations of Mako Pentecost that the alien hive mind so courteously compiled for his viewing pleasure, like some perverted greatest hits. They didn’t forget to include the full tumult of his emotions - despair, frustration, grief, affection, resignation, love, determination. He experienced it all again in quick succession - muddled yet distinct, and then the presence pulled out of his mind as abruptly as it had entered it, leaving his head feeling like it was filled with cotton wool.

As he sat through the shock of the attack, trying vainly to look like nothing had happened, the living, breathing Mako glanced curiously at him. “You okay?”

He nodded.

“You don’t look it,” she said, concerned. “Was it an attack? I thought you had it under control.”

“I’m fine,” he muttered, staring at the road.

“I need you to be fine, Becket,” she said, her knuckles white as she clenched the wheel. “Because I need to finish this.”

“You’re not the only one,” he retorted, with a little too much impatience.

He immediately regretted his tone as she turned to him slowly with glowering eyes. Luckily, this stretch of road was straight.

“Sorry,” he said hastily.

Those flashbacks had seriously rattled him; it was the the first time he had experienced them with her as the subject. Yancy was no longer a weak point so they moved onto the other person he deeply cared about. His brother had only died once and he only saw it once but, thanks to the Drift, he was witness to all one hundred and one instances of her death.

The sputtering of the engine filled the silence as he stewed in his emotions. Too fucking much had happened to him lately.

“I’m sorry,” he said again. “Your father, this guy Chuck... You want to destroy the Precursor to avenge them and you have a right to because they destroyed your life. I understand that you need to do this. We’ve got a mutual goal and I’m gonna do everything I can to get it done.”

The landscape outside his window was suddenly very absorbing. The sputtering continued loudly.

“I was unfairly selfish back there,” she said finally, sounding a little embarrassed. “I apologise too, I... forgot about your brother.” Taking her eyes briefly off the road, she looked at him earnestly. “And I appreciate your help.”

Her attention was already back to driving but her words echoed in his head until they sunk into him with a warmth like the setting sun that was throwing her face into stark profile. The window was rolled down and her blue and black hair was whipping around in the wind.

“It’s nothing,” he said, in a tone that indicated that he had already forgiven her.

She laughed with relief and he wanted to capture this moment in amber.

“Was it me who told you about Chuck?”

“Yeah, but I don’t know much other than his name,” he said. “I’m guessing he’s the one who helped you like you’re doing with me.”

“He was a childhood friend, we grew up together. But it was unfortunate that we both got the Drift. I saw a close friend die three hundred times and it tore me up inside. I don’t want that to happen to you.”

He didn’t want to believe what she was trying to get at.

“You have an advantage that I didn’t have. I don’t know you and you don’t know me,” she said, attempting to sound brisk and detached but failing. “It’ll be easier for you if we keep it that way.”

It was an unexpected piece of advice even though it was for his own good.

“You should’ve told me this earlier because it’s already way too late,” he said, with a wry smile.

The engine started rattling louder.

“Shit.” 

Then the car slowed to a crawl until it stopped altogether. He didn’t know if she was responding to him or the empty fuel tank. 

They walked until their suits ran out of battery, leaving them standing like strange mannequins by the side of the road. Evening was setting in and they had to find shelter.

“I meant what I said,” she said, marching across a field to a distant farmhouse.

“I did too.” 

The cottage and barn were all too familiar sights; the two-seater helicopter would come into view when they cleared the top of the small hill and she would exclaim about their good luck. 

“Since I’m already in the deep end, I might as well ask you,” he said, and he heard her groan over the crunch of their footsteps on the stubble. “Were you adopted?”

“Straight to the hard-hitting questions,” she snorted. They walked so long in silence he thought she wasn’t going to answer him at all. “My parents, my biological ones, and I went into Tokyo for some medical tests for my father. I got separated from them when the attack happened. It was small, one of the first around the world so nobody knew what to do and it was mayhem. I hid in an alleyway, covering my ears because it was so loud and I couldn’t bear to hear the screams. And then one of them came down the alleyway, creeping and shifting like they do. It was a dead end, I had nowhere to go but then the thing got hit over the head with something. It was almost comical, I would have laughed if I hadn’t thought I was close to death. Stacker Pentecost saved my life. He adopted me a short time later.”

“How old were you?”

“Thirteen.”

“Do you know what happened to your real parents?”

“No,” she said quietly. “We tried to find them but they were eventually presumed dead.”

“And then you followed your father living on army bases all around the world.”

“As is widely documented by nosy reporters.”

“Did you like moving around so much?”

“I loved it, I met some great people, I met Chuck. But we didn’t go back to Tokyo for years. Father had leave for a day so we spent it in the city but then the same fucking thing happened to me the last time I was there. How many times could a girl lose her parents in a lifetime?” she said wearily.

Before the full-scale attack, rogue Mimics caused havoc in downtown Tokyo and after it was over the residents thought that that would be the end of it like a few years ago, but their hopes were dashed a week later.

In the meantime, she joined the army that her father so recently departed, with full military honours, and he tried to imagine her at the funeral. Did she cry? He couldn’t see her openly weeping.

“The world knows me as Mako Pentecost but that’s because I gave the army that name when I enlisted,” she continued. “I wanted to honour his name.”

“You have,” he said, and believed it. “He would be proud.”

“I’ll never know because he’s dead. But I really hope so.”

At the top of the hill, they stood peacefully in the cool air and the dying light, listening to the sounds of the night that were just beginning to stir.

“Do you see that?” The comfortable silence broke; she had spotted the helicopter behind the barn at last. “I think it’s a helicopter!”

“Looks like it,” he said indifferently, watching her face light up with excitement. “I’m curious, what did you change your name from?”

“Oh Becket, over my dead body,” she said sweetly, and left him on the hill laughing quietly to himself.

In the cottage, he went straight to the bureau where the helicopter keys were kept and slid them into his pocket, and while she inspected the aircraft, he pretended to look over the barn.

“It looks like it’s in working order,” she called. “Did you find the keys?”

“No,” he said, trying to sound disappointed.

“Are you sure?” She reached up to pull the protective tarp off and winced. 

“Yeah, I’m sure. Is there something wrong with your arm?”

“No,” she said, and reached up again but this time she gasped sharply with pain.

“Yes, there is. C’mon, Pentecost, let me see.”

She reluctantly unzipped her jacket to reveal a white shirt that was stained with blood at the right shoulder. 

“You’re injured.”

“No shit.”

“I’m patching you up.”

“We don’t have time,” she said impatiently, trying to put her jacket back on. “I’m going to look for the keys.”

“I’ve already gone through the place twice, you’re still bleeding, and the light’s gone,” he said, steering her back to the barn. “You might as well let me do this.”

“Fine,” she huffed, relenting.

The wound was small but deep and though she grimaced with pain as he cleaned it, she sat quietly still. The tips of his fingers feeling slightly tingly, he smoothed the tape over her skin to secure the bandage, and his gaze rested briefly on the freckles that were sprinkled sparsely across the top of her shoulder.

“Would you like some tea?” he asked.

“You found tea?” she said, sounding incredulous.

“Yep, the pantry was stuffed with it. They even have green tea.”

“Oh, I’d love some.”

When he handed her the steaming mug she breathed in the clean, earthy scent of the liquid and sighed contentedly.

“Isn’t this cozy?” she said sarcastically, taking a sip.

“As cozy as a filthy barn can be,” he laughed. He sat a little too heavily on a hay bale and the keys in his pocket jingled.

“What was that?” she said sharply. He made to shrug off the question but she interrupted him. “What are you doing?”

“What?”

“How did you know I like green tea?” she said, her voice rising, realisation setting in. “How many times have we been here?”

“Look, I -”

“I know you have them, give them to me,” she barked. “I can’t believe this. Give me the fucking keys, Becket.”

“It’s dark and you need rest,” he said, handing them over. “We could siphon the gas tomorrow morning and drive the car that’s in the garage.”

“You told me you would do everything to help me so why are you doing this?” she said angrily, storming out. “We’re wasting time!”

“Please, don’t do this,” he pleaded, following her.

“Why the fuck not?” 

“Because you die when you start that engine! This is as far as you go.”

“Maybe this time will be different,” she said stubbornly.

“It won’t. You know it won’t. There’s a Mimic waiting in the field beyond and it brings the helicopter down every single time. The only thing we haven’t tried is a version where you walk away -”

“I am not walking away,” she seethed. “I’m a soldier. I’ve got a score to settle. I am not walking away.” She opened the pilot door and climbed in. “Get the fuck in.”

“You die here! Every time,” he said desperately. “I can’t save you, Mako. If I go on and kill the Precursor you’ll be dead. Forever.”

“Why do you care what happens to me?” she said, trying to find the ignition. Then she suddenly stopped, pressing her forehead to the dashboard.

They didn’t need words to understand each other.

“I wish I didn’t know you, but I do.”

She turned the key.

“God damn it, Mako,” he muttered, watching her rise into the air.

The Mimic attacked immediately. The helicopter went into a tailspin, tearing branches off trees and crashing into the barn. He stayed clear of the destructive path until everything was still again.

She had dragged herself out of the cockpit. Seeing her lying on the ground, bleeding out always brought a lump to his throat. He knelt beside her and carefully picked up her limp hand, held it, and waited, expecting her to slip away quietly like before but she opened her eyes and tried to speak.

“My name was Mori,” she whispered in his ear.

He watched her die and let the Mimics come for him.

 

-

 

The unusual absence of Alphas didn’t come to his notice until about the ninth reset - after he decided to go on without her. The mental assaults were still occurring but he seemed to have forgotten why they were happening in the first place; he was too preoccupied with the images that flashed so briefly before his mind’s eye but lingered in their emotional impact. 

It was true the visions had been increasing in frequency but it was suspicious that the Alphas had stopped stalking him. They were probably biding their time, giving him a false sense of security. In any case, he shouldn’t be complacent.

On the beach from afar, he would obliterate the Mimic that would kill her the moment she stepped out of the wreckage on the beach, and then, without interacting with her, he would move on, for both their sakes. However, by the fifteenth attempt it was apparent he couldn’t go as far on his own; their teamwork was crucial to their advancement.

The realisation sunk in as he hunkered in a trench trying to catch his breath. He shook his head in exasperation. He was just starting to get used to waking up to a new reset without the afterimage of her lying dead on the barn floor. If it had to be the two of them, fine, but he had to figure out how to prevent the helicopter crash.

Absorbed in his thoughts, he was kicked unceremoniously out of the path of a flying piece of shrapnel.

“Fucking daydreamer! Move!”

A blur of blue and a familiar voice were quickly subsumed by the clamour of battle but it had been her, there was no doubt. He looked around to get a glimpse of her but there was no sign of her distinctive exo-suit. She had already moved on.

Far from clearing his head like she had advised, he was more distracted than ever; what could he do differently so that she could survive? It was a dead end that he came to again and again. Maybe he just wasn’t looking far back enough. The answer had to be somewhere -

Sand was falling onto his shoulders in little cascades, breaking him out of his thoughts and, when he looked behind him, into a sweat. At last, he was face to face with a Mimic, an Alpha. It opened its maw in a simulacrum of a smile and before he could do anything to escape he was lost in the void that lived there. When he finally tore his eyes away he was locked in the Alpha’s vice-like grip, squirming uselessly. If she had been with him, he would have been riddled with bullet holes, or something similar, by now to send him on to the next reset. Sensing his hopelessness, it widened its ugly grin further.

He felt a cold and thin sharpness on the side of his neck and then a wet warmth flowed down it, soaking his uniform. It had slit his throat, attempting to bleed the Drift from him. Coughing, drowning in his own blood, he struggled vainly to get away, his movements becoming more sluggish as the seconds passed. It was taking no chances; the Alpha was going to supervise his death until the last drop. 

His mind was going. The alien’s dark mass, uncomfortably close, crowded his blurring vision, its presence suffocating until he could no longer stay conscious, could no longer stop the void from consuming him. Memories of her that he could not quite grasp floated by then faded into the fog.

It started as a distant whisper. Something he could not distinguish from his faintly beating heart. But then, as though in a final spark of self-preservation, Mako’s voice burst through his darkness in sudden, ringing clarity.

“Are you ready?”

He opened his eyes blearily. The Alpha was still smiling smugly at him.

Painfully, slowly, he reached up to his belt, to a grenade.

“Fuck you,” he spat, more blood than words, and pulled the pin.

 

-

 

He awoke with a start. And a sure feeling that he was different. 

He lay still, assessing his environment. The last moments of the previous reset were hazy at best. Was he still living in a time loop?  

Judging from the familiar sights and sounds around him it was the beginning of a new reset, however, he knew it would be his last. Even if it tried to kill him in the process, the Alpha had achieved its primary goal -  to take back the Drift. But when he had blown himself up there was still enough of it remaining in his system to send him back for one last reset.

A distant scrabbling that wasn’t part of his reverie intruded and he snapped back to the present, freezing at the touch of her arm that barred his way. The sound was loud and unwelcome in this small, silent town at the base of the mountain, its residents long vacated.

She led the way cautiously to the source of the snuffling, her weapon held ready to fire. They rounded the corner quickly and came upon the sight of a dog rooting around in an overturned bin.

Tension broken, they turned to each other and laughed nervously, disturbing the dog from its business.

Still smiling, she knelt down and called to it.

“C’mere, buddy,” she said, her voice pitched high to attract the dog. It waddled over excitedly. “Hey there, buddy, what’s your name?”

Judging from its hungry appearance and the way it was enjoying their belly rubs, it was clear it had been missing human attention for a while. Its tongue lolled out excitedly and the stump of its tail wiggled with enthusiasm.

“I used to know a dog exactly like this one,” she said, watching him trying to get it to give him its paw. 

“Oh yeah? What was its name?”

“Max,” she said simply, smiling gently at his attempts to evade the bulldog’s licks. She straightened up. “We should get a move on.”

“What about this guy?”

“It’s an animal. Don’t worry, it knows how to look after itself.”

It followed them as they continued to walk through the town, making detours to investigate this or that smell then coming back to trot along at her heel. When the modest buildings seemed to peter out and the mountainous landscape of Alpine Italy loomed uninterrupted again the nameless dog stopped and sat down without a noise.

“Well, I guess it’s made its own decision,” he said. He looked back at it where it blinked slowly in farewell at their retreating figures.

They crossed a bridge that spanned a small river and stopped to size up the road ahead. It twisted up the side of the mountain in hairpin turns.

“Better get started,” she said, surreptitiously glancing over her shoulder at the town before setting off. He looked back too but the road was empty.

“Funny we haven’t seen a single car,” he said, walking beside her.

“The dam’s just at the top of the mountain,” she said, shrugging. “And we’ve got legs.”

“Yeah, we do,” he laughed. Her gaze was steadfastly fixed ahead, thoughtful. “What was that back there?”

“What?” she said automatically.

“The dog.”

She gave him a look that was neither amused nor annoyed. “You really are nosy.”

It was his turn to shrug.

“A friend used to own one. An English Bulldog,” she said, her breathing becoming imperceptibly faster. “Used to have it with him all the time.”

“Chuck?” It was an educated guess.

This time, her glance was sharp but she didn’t break her stride. He waited patiently for her to continue. There was always a quiet moment of hesitation before she eventually said anything, like she was still not used to talking about anything remotely personal, like she was waiting for the memories to surface and relived them before shaping them into words.

“Yes.”

He heard a small sniff, nearly unheard amongst their boots scraping on the bitumen. He walked a step behind her, and let her tell her story in her own time.

“He’s dead. You probably know that since you already know who the hell he is,” she said, her walking pace even quicker now. She bowed her head for the briefest of moments. “For fuck’s sake, Becket, why do I even talk to you? You’re just a guy I’ve known for a day and a half.”

“I dunno,” he said, looking at the back of her head. “Maybe because we had this fucked up, unexplainable thing in common.”

She stopped for the first time and turned around, her eyes searching his for any trace of pity but found only compassion and understanding that could only have come from their shared experiences.

She nodded and they continued the climb side by side.

“The reason why I lost the Drift was because of Chuck…” She paused and shook her head, her brow furrowing, recalling the conclusion of a long, agonised argument she had had with herself many times over. “No, not because of him but because I let everything I was feeling bottle up inside of me until I couldn’t even think straight,” she said, her voice forcibly steady. “He died and I saw it happen - too many times - and it left me traumatised. I’d known him since I was thirteen, he was like a brother to me. And then - no father, no friends, nobody I trusted enough to talk about it with. It was dangerous. I knew that there was a high possibility that I could lose the Drift the next time I went into battle and lose the only chance of destroying them all. On some level, I think I wanted that to happen. Lose it so I wouldn’t have to deal with it anymore. I got my wish. I nearly died. They took the Drift but I wish sometimes they would have taken my life as well. I was so alone.”

He couldn’t say anything, struck as he was by her story and the tremble that had crept into her voice towards the end. He gripped her shoulder firmly. A deep breath from her. And he let go.

“The Drift is a double-edged sword. When I got it I thought I had been given an incredible gift even though Chuck warned about its dangers. Did I warn you?” she asked. Her face was tired and drawn. He nodded. “You didn’t listen, did you?” He shook his head and grinned apologetically. She sighed. “I thought, this was it, this was how I was going to get them back for killing my father and then I can be done with it but it broke me instead. I lay in that hospital bed weighing the pros and cons until I fell asleep each night. I decided to keep going though, keep up the research, keep up my strength. It was easier because without the Drift there was no responsibility, no pressure but there was also practically no hope of taking them down.”

“What made you decide?”

“I’m not sure. It was something to do other than try and kill myself,” she said, her reserve dropping completely. “I was too cowardly to do anything about that so I just hung onto the hope of coming across someone with the Drift.”

He didn’t believe in fate, he only followed in the wake of chance and choice. Meeting her in the chaos of the beach was one hell of a twist in fortune.

She stopped in the middle of the road and he did too. Side by side, they stared at each other, the air between them charged with a strange intensity. He could feel it lifting the hairs on his arms and his fingers twitched at the short distance between their hands. She looked at him like she had witnessed a magic coin trick for the first time, a small measure of wonderment mixed in with a healthy dose of suspicion, her mind trying to work out the sleight of hand. All he wanted to do was kiss her.

He was aware of the sharp mountain air that ruffled their hair and how it had raised the colour in her cheeks, pink with cold and exercise. Everything was somehow much more in focus than ever before; he noticed, with the help of the bright sunlight, that each of her dark brown irises had a small wedge of slightly lighter pigment, like the colour of long-dried blood, and that her cupid’s bow did not sit exactly on the centre line of her face. What was she thinking of him? It was hard to know, she was inscrutable most of the time. But what about this moment? He felt a tremor, maybe, he fancied, a side effect of their standing so close. But his fantasy faded when her eyes finally shifted from his and into the trees further up the mountain, following a few birds that had taken flight. It had been a phenomenon of a more geological nature.

The last turn of the road disappeared into the mouth of a tunnel and they stood mere metres from its entrance. The dam was on the other side.

“We’ve got to hurry,” she said, already leaving him behind. He watched it swallow her and heard her echoing voice call back to him. “Becket! Stop daydreaming!”

He smiled and followed her into the darkness, guided by the sounds of her footfalls. It was a tunnel that twisted and turned, the light from the end of it only visible as the last turn was made. He burst into sunshine and stood blinking to adjust his eyesight just in time to catch a figure leaping over a low wire fence. She waved at him impatiently.

“I felt another one in the tunnel,” she said, watching him jump down. “A larger one.”

“Me too.”

“You’ve got them, right?”

He knew he did but he checked anyway. “Yep.”

“Good, let’s go.”

The top of the dam wall gave incredible of views of the valley on either side but as he ran the peaceful silence was broken by deep rumblings. She increased her pace in response.

The door was plastered with warning signs in Italian and English but she paid them no mind, going for the handle at once. It was locked.

“Stand back,” she said, and with two precise bullets blasted the lock apart. She kicked the door open. There were steps descending into shadow. “You have my back, Becket.”

It wasn’t a question or a command, just a simple statement of fact. 

He nodded his assurance and they went down together into the stairwell, trying to make as little noise in the echoing concrete chamber as possible, though their efforts might as well have been futile after she had shot the lock off.

After they had covered what felt like ten floors, she beckoned him over and whispered in his ear, “You should lead.” He must have looked confused. “Your visions. You know where to go.”

They switched places and he was now the one flicking the torch back and forth, nervous that the meagre spotlight could illuminate a Mimic at any moment. It hadn’t even occurred to him that he had a slight advantage because of what he had seen. True, he had guided them through the beach and across Europe but that was because he had lived it so many times he would know when a certain bird standing on a certain tree branch would take a shit. This was different. He had never been here before, physically. Mentally, or however the fuck it worked, he had only snippets of dark and mostly unhelpful images beamed into his head at inopportune times. And now that the Drift had been taken away he could die, for real, and the mission would be over, no second or third or three hundred and forty-sixth chances. No more chances to ever see her again. He could only hope if he died then she would succeed.

Finally, the stairs came to an end and they stood on the edge of a metal gangway that stretched across a drop that he couldn’t see the bottom of. Above them were other bridges criss-crossing up into infinity. The space was huge, its air colder than the stairwell but containing a metallic tang that smarted the inside of his nostrils.

He did not remember this place but he had a gut feeling that they should keep going down. In the deepest bowels of the dam, he knew they would find the Precursor.

It was so quiet they were loathe to disturb the silence. Even his racing thoughts sounded loud. Where are they? Do they know we’re here? It’s so damn quiet. I don’t like this, at all. Keep going. Keep walking. Where the fuck are they?

He could hardly handle the anticipation. He tried to calm himself by keeping his breathing in sync with the faint sound of her’s but as they went on it didn’t much help. She was as nervous as he was.

The two faint, circular lights called to them from afar. It was the only source of illumination they had yet seen. As they came closer, they saw that the lights were the up and down buttons of a lift. They looked at each other skeptically. It was obviously a trap but there was no other way to go down. What were the chances that once the doors opened at their destination that they would be greeted by enemies? One hundred percent.

She nodded and he cautiously pressed the down button. With apprehension, they watched as the overhead display methodically ticked its way to their floor and blinked in surprise at the bright light that spilled from inside the lift. 

He stepping over the threshold, she right behind him, looked at the alarming amount of numbers on the panel and chose the very last one. The doors closed and they faced themselves in the scratched reflective surface, feeling the familiar drop in their stomachs. He looked horrible; tired and dirty, with a few days growth of beard on his face, and dark bags under his eyes. She didn’t look much better than him. Her normally poker straight posture was stooped and she held her weapon limply, unusual as she preferred to be alert during most of her waking moments. He knew he was quite a bit taller than her but looking at themselves in a mirror made their height difference amusing and paired with their very lived in appearances, positively hilarious.

Many floors later, he wasn’t feeling so light-hearted. Their reflections looked pathetic and scared. He wore a thin shirt and trousers. She wore the same. He carried an assault rifle and the bag of grenades. She held a semi-automatic pistol and her sword was slung over her shoulder. Vulnerable. Not at all equipped to infiltrate the Precursor’s lair.

She didn’t ask if he knew what was coming or offer any plan of attack, probably because he didn’t volunteer any information. Nothing was of use anyway because he hadn’t seen any paths or passages that led to it, only the terrifying thing itself that waited for him, taunting him to come closer. He suppressed a shudder.

The numbers counted down. It was taking forever and he wanted it to end. He wanted to finish this and feel the release of accomplishment or death, whichever came first. But it was safe in this little box of theirs. It was theirs for a couple of blissfully quiet and safe minutes. Couldn’t they just keep going, shoot past their stop and keep travelling downwards, towards the centre of the earth? 

The numbers counted down. He couldn’t indulge in fantasies any longer. He looked at her reflection and wondered what she was thinking about, as he had often done so. The numbers counted down. He had never asked her out loud and he didn’t want to now, breaking the silence that they both so comfortably inhabited. Instead, he found her hand and held it, an unspoken promise of partnership for the next, possibly last, few hectic minutes of their lives. She squeezed his hand hard and almost immediately let go. That was all he needed. The numbers counted down.

There was suddenly a flurry of movement and sound in the lift as they both checked their weapons and shook out their stiff limbs in some semblance of preparedness. 

“I am ready I am ready I am ready I am ready,” she whispered under her breath, over and over as she completed a brief set of stretches. Then she took a deep breath and stood still and straight. She was ready.

He wished he could feel as calm as she looked. 

Five floors to go. 

They held their weapons at the ready. 

Three floors.

“Good luck, Pentecost.”

Two floors.

“See you on the other side, Becket.”

The doors opened onto utter darkness.

The light from the lift revealed a narrow but empty corridor. He hesitated to step into it, to leave their sanctuary for the unknown.

Movement. Just beyond the reach of the light. 

It was reflecting off their metal tentacles, their undulating, shifting bodies rushed to meet them and she walked forward like she hadn’t just spent the previous few minutes in exhausted, fearful silence. She fired slowly and methodically into the glistening mass growing larger as it neared, and he moved beside her, doing his utmost to keep his mind on three things; walking, aiming, and pulling the trigger, so that he wouldn’t succumb to his own fiercely beating heart.

The creatures fell limp and they stepped gingerly around them. Continuing down the corridor, his eyes finally adjusted and his pulse no longer jackhammered in his chest.

The respite was brief. Two Mimics emerged from the darkness but as the aliens descended upon them the lift doors slowly but surely slid closed. They hadn’t anticipated that.

“Fuck,” whispered her disembodied voice.

Nothing could be done but to shoot wildly in front of them and hope for the best.

The gunfire strobed the corridor and flailing limbs flashed into view in a terrifying facsimile of a heaving dance floor until it suddenly stopped. They were dead.

These two were taken care of but the darkness still posed a problem. The torch had lost battery many floors above and he had tossed it aside without thought. He had had other pressing matters on his mind but he hadn’t realise that without it he would be kicking the bucket even earlier than he desired. 

He was still trying to think of a solution when he heard a scrape and a fizz. Then there was light.

She had lit a flare. Genius. It burned so bright that it hurt his eyes and he had to look away. He caught a glimpse of her face, a fleeting second - bathed in light, feverish eyes and grime and sweat - before she threw the flare as far as she could. 

“We have four minutes,” she said, shoving her pistol into the holster and grabbing her sword handle. 

They ran after the flare, kicking it further as they reached it.

The Mimics came in waves and they met them head on. The clattering of bullet casings onto the ground was rendered inaudible from the reverberation of gunfire yet he heard her, fighting her way through, yelling and grunting in effort as she slashed and hacked at the aliens until they were slain.

When the flare eventually sputtered and died he lit his own and lobbed it over the dead bodies that littered the floor. They moved as quickly as they could because they only had four minutes and anything could happen during it.

Unexpectedly, the flare rolled out from the claustrophobic corridor and illuminated a sight that made his skin crawl. They were at the edge of a round chamber, the size of which could have seemed larger without the amount of Mimics crammed inside of it. The most he had ever seen in one place. The room might just be the size of the hangar that they had trained in in London. He almost wanted to laugh. This was no longer training time, fighting a few Mockers in the safe surrounds of an army base. This was the real fucking thing - and a lot more of it.

“Look, there’s a pit,” she said. She was right. There were so many of the aliens that they nearly obscured the dark hole in the middle.

A deep rumble like distant thunder grew in volume as they stood there. The floor shook beneath their feet and bits of concrete and earth fell from above onto the Mimics. The creatures paid it no mind even when they were crushed by larger chunks but he and Mako couldn’t wait until the ceiling did the job for them. The Precursor was in the pit, he was sure of it, but he had no idea how to get there.

“We’ve got to move,” she said.

“Got a plan?” he said hopefully.

“Nope.”

“I love improvisation.”

He caught her looking at him out of the corner of her eye and gave a nervous grin. Her face stayed grim.

“Me too,” she said, after a few seconds.

“Really?” he said, stunned.

She shrugged and before he could enquire further, she said, “Gotta have a little fun sometimes.”

He couldn’t think of a time that would be less fun than what he was experiencing right now.

Not far from them was a large piece of fallen concrete and she pointed to it. He understood that that was their next goal. There were several more blocks of debris between them and the pit and they would hopscotch their way to it. Small steps.

They lingered in the doorway, silent and avoiding eye contact, an air of expectation between them that he wanted to break but didn’t know how to. This was the time to say something meaningful before they went to their certain deaths and there was no coming back from the dead now that the Drift had left him. Where could he start? There was so much to say.

“Pentecost, I -”

But she had lost patience.

“Stay close, Becket,” she said, and leapt out into the chamber.

All he could do was follow her into the fray, thinking he had lost his chance as he killed Mimic after Mimic.

They reached the last safehaven of concrete and it was farther from the pit than he liked. He looked at the stretch of space and the longer he looked the larger it became.

“Hey,” she panted, kneeling beside him with her back against the slab. Blood trickled from a cut on her cheek and her face was shiny with sweat. “I’ll distract them. You run for it.”

“What? I thought you wanted to do it,” he said, shocked.

“It was you who got us here in the first place.”

“But you need to do this! You lived for this moment, you said it yourself.”

“Your brother…”

“And what about your father and Chuck?”

She stared at him, not saying a word. Her eyes, behind a thin film of tears, conflicted as she searched his. He couldn’t believe this. Why was she backing out at the last second? This was it. Her last chance and she was throwing it away. It couldn’t be for him, although he liked to think maybe it was, just a little bit. It was something else. Was it because she had felt this way for so long she was afraid to feel any other way? Was she afraid of closure?

“Together,” she blurted. He had never seen her look so scared.

“Yes,” he said. He smiled and wiped away a tear that had fallen down her cheek. “Of course. I’m with you.”

She gave the smallest smile, one that slipped past her attempts to hold back more tears and he wanted to reach out and touch her again. In the end, her resolve held and, before he knew it, she was talking to him in her normal manner.

“Okay, give me half of them,” she said.

He handed over one of the two grenade bandoliers in the bag and she slung it over her head, slipping one arm through. While he did the same, the chamber started shaking violently and it didn’t seem like it would stop.

“This is it,” he said, rubbing dust and grit from his eyes.

“We’ll jump in from opposite ends. I’ll go this way, you go that way,” she said, with an edge of apprehension in her voice. “Becket… I have to say this -”

His heart skipped a beat.

“Thank you for what you’ve done, getting me this far. You’re a good man,” she said, turning to him with the most serious expression, and he was breathless. “I wish I had the chance to know you better.”

He could have said something stupid, like “you’re welcome”, but he didn’t have the opportunity to make a fool of himself because she was kissing him and he had never felt so warm in his life. He lifted his hand to caress her soft hair but she was already pulling away. The blue strands slipped through his fingertips yet he could still feel the pressure of her lips.

“Mako, I need to say thank you, too -”

The ceiling split with an almighty crack.

“We need to go  _ now _ ,” she said urgently.

“I guess this is goodbye,” he whispered.

“Yes,” she said, simply. The smile she gave him was one with no regrets, only determination. He would hold it in his mind’s eye as he went over the edge. “For our families, Raleigh.”

They ran out from behind the concrete and he felt light as a feather, untouchable and agile, as he dodged pieces of falling debris and attacking Mimics. He didn’t know where this sense of invincibility came from but he was taking full advantage of it, his physical vulnerabilities forgotten.

The pit loomed larger until he was standing on the lip of it, looking into its unfathomable depths. He saw her across from him, her figure as still as a statue. A final nod from her and he let himself fall in, the air rushing past him cold as an arctic wind. It felt like an age until he hit water and then he swam what he guessed was downwards. Tiny dots of light started to appear before him and he thought it was caused by his lack of air but as he kept swimming he realised it was a bioluminescence. It permeated the darkness so that he could discern a familiar shape below, a shape that made him recoil in disgust. It was time.

He lifted the grenades over his head, pulled the pins and let the bandolier drift down to the Precursor, counting down the seconds until the explosion. In those last moments, he cast around in the dimly lit water for any sign of her but all around him was just grey.

Strange as it was, his mind was clear when he closed his eyes and let himself sink. When the first shockwave reached him he had already lost consciousness.

 

-

 

All he could see was a dull, pinky red. All he heard was noise. Wasn’t death supposed to be... white? And quiet?

As the muddle of sound became distinct and familiar ones, he couldn’t deny it any longer. He opened his eyes and saw blue sky and white, skidding clouds. 

He was alive.

How the fuck?

He sat up on the tarmac of the London base and all thoughts of the improbability of his existence vanished.

Praying was something wholly unknown to him but he did so now, as he bolted towards the training hangar, to any and all divine and higher powers in the universe, in the parallel universe, in the multiverse, anywhere, he didn’t care. He just wanted… please, for it to be true…

Winded, he burst into the hangar and amongst the stationary Mockers was the figure he had so longed to see again, standing with her back to him but alive and breathing. 

“Yes?” she said, tersely, and his heart leapt into his throat. She must have heard his hurried steps. “What do you want?”

She turned around and recognition slowly dawned. And she smiled.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Phew. This was a work in progress for so long - nearly a year. If you're reading this, thank you for sticking it out through this long-ass piece of work and I hope you enjoyed it! Comments are very much welcome.


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